Under Our Skin 2: Emergence Page #4

with adventurer Lars monsen,

who apparently is one of

the most famous people

in Norway today.

Jordan Fisher Smith, welcome.

You are kind of the equivalent

to Lars monsen in the states, right?

Well, we both had been

working in the outdoors,

in nature all of our lives.

And you have another thing in common,

'cause you also have been

infected by the lyme disease?

Unfortunately.

Now I see the same thing

happening in Norway,

so I'm here to help.

When I got ill, I understood

this is just like a long expedition.

You have to have the same mindset.

- So true.

- Make the same choices.

You know, look ahead

and just choose what thoughts to think.

I think the one thing that being ill,

and, not just with a tick bite,

having a dream and keeping

it through the illness,

that's an important thing.

Don't give up your dream.

I always expected to get better,

meaning that I couldn't imagine

living the way I was living.

The experience of living in a lyme body

is the worst misery I've ever suffered.

It turns your body

into a torture chamber.

I think that I had one attribute

that might have saved me,

that I was trained

as a ranger for 21 years

to recognize a deadly situation

and then being absolutely relentless

in fighting my way out of it.

Everybody's asking me,

why are you better?

What worked for you?

What drug exactly did you take?

The answer I almost always give people

is, pfft, I took all of them.

I was able to stop taking

long-term antibiotics

almost seven years ago now.

The greatest problem that

I see lyme people having

is that they're set in

a public health setting

that is doing its best

to deny them treatment.

You're gonna have to fight for yourself

while feeling awful and not

feeling like doing anything,

and this was certainly

my greatest challenge,

was continuing to fight for myself.

When I shared my story

in "under our skin,"

I sort of became this poster child

for lyme disease, and that frightened me.

Because in some ways,

it kept me in my story,

and people felt like they wanted to share

all their symptoms with me.

And sometimes it would overburden me

when I was still really sick.

So I was resistant to

talking about lyme disease

for about five years

because I didn't want

to talk about this bug

and this hideous illness.

I wanted to talk about

what it means to heal

and what that journey looks like.

I think that's where I get healed,

when I can help people

that have gone through

the same thing that I have.

So, with "lyme less, live more,"

we really wanted to bring

people into our world

and really meet some of the people

that have been so

inspirational in our journey.

We're so lucky and happy

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